565 Broadway (Real World New York House) (New York City, New York)

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133-foot, 9-story Italian-Renaissance residential building originally completed in 1860 with five floors faced in marble. 4 additional floors, faced in brick, were added in 1893. Designed by John Kellum for Ball, Black & Co., it is six bays wide on Prince Street, with three bays on Broadway. It has round-arches on the rusticated ground floor, flanked by fluted Corinthian columns and pilasters. Above a cornice, the upper floors have stone quoins at the corners, and full stone enframements around the windows, with corbelled feet. Each of the windows in the outer bays are topped with triangular pediments. Facing Broadway, the center bay has rounded pediments, and facing Prince Street, the middle bays have flat cornices. There is a black metal fire escape on the Prince facade, and both sides are crowned by a roof cornice with dentils and circular ornaments between the modillions. A round water tower is visible toward the northeast corner of the roof.

Touted as the first “absolutely fire-proof” building in New York, the vaults below street level contained the first safe deposit system in the United States. The single-sheet panes of plate glass imported for the first floor windows—14 feet, 8 inches tall and 9 feet, 2 inches wide—were thought to be the largest ever made at the time. The first floor was exclusively for the sale of jewelry—diamonds and other gems, watches and silverware. A marble staircase took the shopper to the second floor where artwork and clocks were displayed. Ball, Black & Co. advertised that the “stock of diamonds in this store is among the largest in the world, offering a vast selection of the costliest gems of the finest water and the rarest cutting.” On the third floor could be found chandeliers and gas fixtures. The top three floors housed the manufacturing and workroom spaces.

Despite its flawless reputation as a quality purveyor of high-end goods, Ball, Black & Co. went out of business in 1874. By 1890 the white marble palazzo was home to Banner Brothers, wholesale clothing merchants. Charles and Moritz Freedman purchased the building in 1893, and commissioned the additional floors by architects Little & O’Connor, who worked in light-colored brick, mirroring the corner quoins and the window pediments of the original structure.

Soho suffered a severe decline during the middle of the 20th century and buildings were neglected and abused. No. 565 Broadway lost its cornice, but otherwise remained essentially unaltered despite its deteriorating marble. Then in the 1970s and 80s a renaissance occurred as artists discovered the cheap loft space with ample sunlight. In 1979 Martin R. Fine commissioned restoration architect Joseph Pell Lombardi to convert No. 565 to residential cooperative apartments. In 1992 the lost cornice was reproduced, the same year that two floors of the building were leased as the set of the reality television show "The Real World New York.”

The building was renovated again in 2004 by Goshow Architects. The ground floor is now occupied by Pink, selling women's undergarments.